Book

If you love all things Greek, this is an enjoyable romp through the world of Greek wine and independent travel in Greece. If you want to learn hard facts about Greek wines, it's probably not for you, but it's a great source of softer information.

Travel with a focus is always a fascinating experience, because any distinct interest will draw you along some amazing byways you would never discover otherwise. This was athor Miles Lambert-Gocs experience when he set out to explore the wines of Greece, cup by cup. These days, Greek wineries are finally offering tasting rooms and tours, but for Lambert-Gocs, the wines he tested were poured from taverna barrels, decanted in the front parlors of old houses, and shared with him in the heart of the Greek countryside. Here he finds wines so wild even after ten years in the bottle that they're named, with reason, after centaurs. He travels to mountain villages where the vine god Dionysus is said to have been born and boards ferries to reach distant islands where he's heard of an intriguing wine. The subtitle is "A Dionysian Travelogue" but he is as persistent as Odysseus in pursuing Greek wines. Some oenophiles may scoff at Lambert-Gocs descriptions of the wines he sampled. He never falls back on the flowery conventions of describing wine, concentrating instead on the states of mind the wines and the locations he samples them at induce. While Greek wines are changing, some for the better, a trip such as Lambert-Gocs made is still possible, and this entertaining volume should inspire some imitators, as happily intoxicated on Greece as they are on its wines.